Quotes by Canadian Authors - Page 164

Thinking too much about the future, especially in terms of wants and desires, constricts us. First of all, it does little, if anything to achieve goals. Secondly, consider, that what you think you may want tomorrow may not actually be what you want tomorrow. You are ever-changing and constantly evolving. It’s OK to want better for the future, but don’t expect for the future. Just as introspection is very challenging, so is knowing what is in fact good or best for us and the path there. We may think we need to do things one way, when in fact, we may need to do them in a completely different way.
Akiroq Brost
It does no good for you to spend all of your time worrying about what may come and being blind to what you have in the present.” ~Blaez, The Guardians of Eastgate
Sherry Leclerc
I like driving cab. Receptionists, sales clerks, waitresses -- they all have to look pleasant all the time. I can snarl if I want. There ain't too many women who can do that. Maybe garment workers are allowed to snarl at their sewing machines. But women mostly have to look pleasant when they're fucking miserable, and smile when they're angry.
Helen Potrebenko
In late 1949, at two and a half years old, I arrived in Jamaica for the first time. I had crossed the Atlantic by air from England. My Jamaican father was studying in London, my European mother was sick, and so in true Jamaican style I was sent home to my grandparents.
Rachel Manley
You don't decide what your purpose is in life you discover it. Your purpose is your reason for living.
Bob Proctor
I solved world hunger.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Oh, ye of little faith.”
“You realize that solving world hunger would mean you’d be doing something good for a change?”
“Ah, but there’s the kicker: I destroyed my solutions.” He finally looks away from the window and gives me this cocky smirk. “Malevolence 101, Kirk.
Abria Mattina
We cannot win in team situations or in relationships by ourselves. It is like trying to pick up a pencil with only one finger...Even if that one finger is extremely strong, it will prove almost impossible to pick up that pencil unless you use your other fingers or some other part of your hand. Teamwork is a bit like using all of your fingers. Each one is unique and contributes something different, but they unite in pursuit of a common goal.
Terry Orlick
I figured a woman can't be understood the way a man can. Women have purposes men can't even imagine.
Craig Davidson
Trivers, pursuing his theory of the emotions to its logical conclusion, notes that in a world of walking lie detectors the best strategy is to believe your own lies. You can’t leak your hidden intentions if you don’t think they are your intentions. According to his theory of self-deception, the conscious mind sometimes hides the truth from itself the better to hide it from others. But the truth is useful, so it should be registered somewhere in the mind, walled off from the parts that interact with other people.
Steven Pinker
Secrets...are the very root of cool.
William Gibson
The central question of any execution: do you want the hood on or off? Would you rather see it coming? Or would you rather simply drift away, cocooned in warm darkness, stinking of nothing but yourself? A kind, familiar place to hide in, just before the snap, the crackle? Or the pop?
Gemma Files
Life's an act of magic, too. Claire Hamill sings a line in one of her songs that really sums it up for me: 'If there's no magic, there's no meaning.' Without magic- or call it wonder, mystery, natural wisdom- nothing has any depth. It's all just surface. You know: what you see is what you get. I honestly believe there's more to everything than that, whether it's a Monet hanging in a gallery or some old vagrant sleeping in an alley.
Charles de Lint
The more you've struggled to heal and love yourself, the more inspiring your story will be to others when you come out the other side full of triumph, awareness, and honour. Don't give up. Your struggle today is the source of your wisdom tomorrow.
Vironika Tugaleva
Life isn't as serious as the mind makes it out to be.
Eckhart Tolle
I'm not trying to be anyone's savior. I just try to think about the future and not be sad
Elon Musk
Without the will, marriage is a mockery; without the emotion, it is a drudgery. You need both.
Ravi Zacharias
She'd just had the best sex of her life, with an ex-boyfriend she'd spent the last decade pretending didn't exist, in his adorable half-finished, renovating-by-himself one room schoolhouse. Unsettled wouldn't even begin to describe how Laney should be feeling, and it didn't matter, because how she actually felt was pretty damn good.
Zoe York
Then you go ahead and cry, " Will said. That ended my weeping. Had he asked me not to cry, I would not have been able to stop, but his permission somehow quit my tears.
Kathleen Grissom
Life wears us down around the edges. The stress of life and its neces­sities cracks things. We learn to protect ourselves. We learn not to let so much of the world in, because some­times it’s all too much, and we don’t have the resilience we need to survive it. When we’re six, we make best friends easily. When we’re fifty, we don’t. That’s age and expe­rience for you.But books are different. We can let books in. We can wrap them up in our hearts. We can approach them as if we’re still young and open. Even so, it’s not as simple. Because we’re not as simple.(Source: State of the Writer, sort of, September 2015 - blog post)
Michelle Sagara
You don’t have to sleep with guys,” I whispered, “to make them like you.”Kya stared at me for a moment with heavy eyelids. “You don’t get it, do you, Gracie? I sleep with them so they won’t like me.” My heart broke for her a little more.
Janet Gurtler
Stop thinking you can't do something. All those thoughts you have going on in your head are made up lies. What are you afraid of? Success? Failure? No such thing as failure. You don't fail at anything. You experience, learn and grow.
Iva Ursano
I’m Detective Piper of the Fairyland Metro Police, and I've been called in to investigate the incident of the missing frog prince…
A.F. Stewart
Piracy is the new radio.
Neil Young
Even before you've gone anywhere, you feel like you've gone somewhere
Deborah Ellis
If the British had fought half as well as this one kissed, she thought, the Americas would still be a colony.
Sue London
Look for Joy: that's God's echo, and his footprint. Happiness . . . happiness and wittiness and cleverness do not count for much when the darkness falls. Joy is tougher.
Sean Stewart
You've never seen this country It's not the way you thought it was Look again.
Al Purdy
People don't have dominion over Nature. it's gone beyond that. Human beings and the world are now the same thing. The future and whatever happens to you after you die - it's all melted together. Death isn't the escape hatch the way it used to be.
Douglas Coupland
The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot. It makes a difference where and when we grew up. The culture we belong to and the legacies passed down by our forebears shape the patterns of our achievements in ways we cannot begin to imagine. It's not enough to ask what successful people are like, in other words. It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't.
Malcolm Gladwell
Let those feelings out. Talk about it. Even if you’re talking to your journal by yourself in an empty room. That still counts. That still matters.If you know someone who’s struggling and isolated, help them talk about it. Even if they don’t have the right words. Even if you sit in silence as they try to feel safe. Even if they shower you with complaints, excuses, and justifications. Even if you can see they’re just playing small, being irrational, blaming circumstances. Just be there. It all counts. It all matters.
Vironika Tugaleva
Life is stress by definition.
Rebecca McNutt
At the end of the day, we all crawl, exhausted, to some doorstep. Some crawl to the doorstep of their new home, the one they have sought for miles without giving up their goal, exhausted by their determination. And others crawl to the doorstep of their prison, the one they have sought to escape, but gave up, exhausted by their determination. And we all enter our new home with a sigh of relief and put our feet up. Some rejoice. Others grow bitter. And yet, we are tired just the same.
Vironika Tugaleva
He’s completely blown through his younger years like his childhood was one big cigarette to smoke carelessly.
Rebecca McNutt
The first thing you should know is that soulmates are real. They are not just some romantic idea. We are made for one person and one person alone.
Ashley Stoyanoff
Everything has been created twice once on a mental plain and once on a physical plain.
Bob Proctor
While paying attention to positive and negative feedback is very important, it is not enough. What also matters is acknowledging and responding to this feedback. This is how you nurture your relationship with your audience.
Cendrine Marrouat
He pokes a finger inside me as he plays with my wetness.” —Sofia Herrera (French Kiss, Unbearable Passion, #2)
Scarlett Avery
Life off Earth is in two important respects not at all unworldly: you can choose to focus on the surprises and pleasures, or the frustrations. And you can choose to appreciate the smallest scraps of experience, the everyday moments, or to value only the grandest, most stirring ones.
Chris Hadfield
When you love people, you are curious about who they are, what they think, and how they feel. You watch them closely, wondering about their experience and what you can do to make it more enjoyable. You feel compassion for their pain and seek to make it more bearable. You are eager to learn the unique language of their existence. You want to under-stand them, inspire them, heal them. What if you could look at yourself this way?
Vironika Tugaleva
There is beauty everywhere on earth, but there is greater beauty in those places where one feels that sense of ease which comes from no longer having to put off one’s dreams until some improbable future – a future inexorably shrinking away; where the fear that has pervaded one’s life suddenly vanishes because there is... nothing to be afraid of.
Josef Škvorecký
I don’t fundamentally understand why people give a shit about what other people put up their noses or what other people put in their veins or what other people breathe into their lungs. I mean I sort of care like if somebodies an addict it’s very destructive to people around that addict. It’s destructive to themselves. I’d like to get them help. I certainly support that which is to get that person help but, I don’t understand how people wake up and say I have to eradicate drug use across the land. “I gotta stick my nose into the business of what other people stick up their nose.” I just find that incomprehensible. I mean, is your life so vacant and so hysterical, so empty, so void of love, care and affection? I can go play with my daughter or I can go and obsessively try and get politicians to throw people in jail for doing things I don’t like. I can’t imagine why people would be choosing option “B” but, only because they don’t have anyone who loves them or, anyone they care about. They don’t have any rich, significant, important, hobbies, relationships, artistic pursuits or anything rich enough to keep them from obsessing about what other people do or bossing and bulling what other people do. This “stick your nose in other people’s business” Is so compulsive and epidemic to human society.
Stefan Molyneux
Why should the spread of ideas and people result in reforms that lower violence? There are several pathways. The most obvious is a debunking of ignorance and superstition. A connected and educated populace, at least in aggregate and over the long run, is bound to be disabused of poisonous beliefs, such as that members of other races and ethnicities are innately avaricious or perfidious; that economic and military misfortunes are caused by the treachery of ethnic minorities; that women don't mind to be raped; that children must be beaten to be socialized; that people choose to be homosexual as part of a morally degenerate lifestyle; that animals are incapable of feeling pain. The recent debunking of beliefs that invite or tolerate violence call to mind Voltaire's quip that those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
Steven Pinker
I do enjoy writing, and I hope someone gets something interesting out of this book. I already have. Now, If I ever have to write a book that is not about me, I may be totally stumped and have writer's block. We will see. Writing is very convenient, has a low expense and is a great way to pass the time. I highly recommend it to any old rocker who is out of cash and doesn't know what to do next. You could hire someone to write it for you if you can't write it yourself. That doesn't seem to matter. Just don't hire some sweaty hack who asks you questions for years and twists them into his own vision of what is right or wrong. Try to avoid doing that.
Neil Young
You can do it now. You can't say you've never dated, because you have. A lot of people, actually.” Xander's gave her a mischievous grin. “You've leveled up, dearest. You're an expert on dating compared to Liv of six months ago.
Danika Stone
Finally, I had held up examples of Goldhagen's inflammatory language and suggested that he had missed the essence of what Primo Levi once called the 'grey zone' of human affairs, described by the historian Christopher Browning as that foggy universe of mixed motives, conflicting emotions, personal priorities, reluctant choices, opportunism and accomodation, all wedded, when convenient, to self-deception and denial. I thought that by marshalling his research into an overly narrow narrative, painted without nuance in black and white, the author had missed the human complexity and the ordinariness of racism.
Erna Paris
I get tired of hearing some science-fiction fans saying that characterization isn't important in SF. In point of fact, I think it's probably more important in SF than in mainstream fiction. After all, if the author can't characterize humans well, he or she probably can't characterize aliens well either.
Robert J. Sawyer
Some string theorists prefer to believe that string theory is too arcane to be understood by human beings, rather than consider the possibility that it might just be wrong.
Lee Smolin
What causes all this?""Pride. What else?
W.P. Kinsella
Life without death simply isn't life, but death
Juliet Daniel
The idea of original sin--of guilt with no possibility of innocence, no freedom of choice, no alternatives--inherently militates against self-esteem. The very notion of guilt without volition or responsibility is an assault on reason as well as on morality. Sin is not original, it is originated--like virtue.
Nathaniel Branden
The water wasn't the same down here. Water is what runs out of the kitchen taps or a playground drinking fountain. It fills bathubs and pools and yes, of course, the ocean- but at a certain depth, water becomes a barrier from all you remember, all you think you know.You're trapped within it, a plaything of it.Focus erodes. Your thoughts mutate. The pressure.The pressure.The soul can't cope with that. It shouldn't be expected to.Humans weren't built for this. There's a reason nothing lives down here.Or nothing should.
Nick Cutter
Only love that continues to flow in the face of anger, blame, and indifference can be called love. All else is simply a transaction.
Vironika Tugaleva
In some ways, we will always be different. In other ways, we will always be the same. There is always room to disagree and blame, just as there is always room to take a new perspective and empathize. Understanding is a choice.
Vironika Tugaleva
We are dealing with God's thoughts: we are obligated to take the greatest pains to understand them truly and to explain them clearly.
D A Carson
The single greatest tool for making moral people commit atrocities is group affiliation. The single greatest tool for promoting global human rights and equality is to end group affiliation.
Heather Marsh
Mearth appeared angry and disappointed briefly, but then she just gazed at the ground. “…It must be horrible, feeling all alone, is it?” she asked.“Oh, not really,” said Alecto, his eyes lifeless, his voice listless. “I’m going to be forgotten by someone who I can’t forget, though. That will be terrible… but maybe it’s better if she does forget me altogether.
Rebecca McNutt
I have never understood why one's affections must be confined as once with women to a single country.
John Kenneth Galbraith
There is only one way to degrade mankind permanently and that is to destroy language.
Northrop Frye
It is humiliating to realize that when you drive yourself underground, when you fake who you are, often you do so for people you do not even like or respect.
Nathaniel Branden
Do you remember how you felt at seventeen? I do and I don't (...) Imagine you came from outer space and someone showed you a butterfly and a caterpillar. Would you ever put the two of them together? That's me and my memories.
Douglas Coupland